


Chag Purim

by IreneSpring



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Developing Relationship, Fluff, Hamentaschen, Irene sneakily tries to teach you about Judaism, Jewish Character, Jewish Holidays, Jewish Rafael, M/M, Purim, Rafael is exclusively nice to the squad on Jewish holidays, Sonny is the best boyfriend, by cleverly cloaking the traditions in fanfiction, yet again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:21:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29706066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IreneSpring/pseuds/IreneSpring
Summary: Rafael tries to celebrate Purim while also still doing his job. Sonny resolves to help him.
Relationships: Rafael Barba/Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	Chag Purim

**Author's Note:**

> Chag Purim sameach, everyone!!!!
> 
> Purim is such an underrated holiday. A lot of people know about hamentaschen (which are not at all underrated, despite what some of my fellow Jews apparently think?) but don't know about the holiday around them. Rafael kind of explains in here, but I recommend looking up at least a short summary of the whole story. It's very interesting.
> 
> Also, there are some traditions missing here, such as reading the Megillah (aka The Story of Esther) and dressing up in costumes. I tried to include them, but I could not find a place where they would make sense. I'm especially bummed about the costumes, but I figure that would be where Rafael draws the line in the sand about what festivities to bring to work.

“Hey, cookies!” Sonny can’t help his happy exclamation when he notices the gift on his desk. At the sound, the rest of the squad looks over, and similar delighted expressions fill the room. Sonny knows that technically they are all grown adults, but they all pulled an all-nighter and breakfast consisted of some trail mix from two weeks ago. The cookies are the best thing to happen to him all day.

“Oh, I love these!” Amanda holds up one of the triangular cookies and pokes at the jelly flavoring. “Nice! Apricot! I haven’t had one in forever, they’re not exactly easy to find in Georgia unless you’re looking.”

“Aren’t they called ham something?” Fin asks, taking a bite of his and nodding in approval.

“Hamentaschen.” Sonny turns around to see Rafael wearing a particularly brightly colored suit and holding another box of cookies. “I see you found the mishloach manot.”

“The what?” Since he first discovered Rafael was Jewish, Sonny thinks he’s gained a very good understanding of Jewish holidays, if he does say so himself. This one eludes him though. He wasn’t even aware there was a holiday today. He feels like Rafael should have told him, what with dating and all, but he supposes they’ve both been busy. 

“It’s those gift basket things, right?” Olivia asks. “I feel like you’ve told me this before.”

“I did. And I also got you them last year.” Sonny tries to think back to when he last got a similar gift from Rafael. He was definitely pining at the time, so he definitely would have noticed.

“Hey! I thought those were for finding new DNA evidence! You never said that was for a holiday!”

“It was on the note,” Rafael says with a shrug. “It said ‘Enjoy your mishloach manot.’”

“Counselor, we saw cookies, we ate cookies, we disposed of the packaging,” Fin explains. 

“If I knew that would happen I wouldn’t have bothered to be nice.”

“So what are they for?” Amanda asks. “Not that I don’t appreciate random gifts and all, but they don’t really seem to match your style.”

“It’s Purim.”

“Uh huh.”

“It’s a holiday. One of the things you do is exchange gift baskets, which means ideally you’d get something for me, but I’ll give you a pass since you just figured out it exists.”

“Sorry,” Sonny says immediately. He should have looked it up. He makes a note to himself to figure out when all the Jewish holidays are this year and put them on his calendar. He should probably also figure out which ones need gifts and which ones just mean Rafael will go to temple for an extra hour or something. 

“Don’t worry about it. Chag Purim Sameach, detectives.” At that Rafael leaves the room and Olivia smiles.

“I think that’s the best mood I’ve seen him in all month.”

“I don’t know,” Sonny says. “Last week Buchanan got food poisoning and cancelled, leaving him with a free day.”

“How do you know that?” Fin asks. Right. They weren’t supposed to let other people know yet.

“He was gloating,” Sonny says immediately. Fin nods and they get back to their work. Sonny takes a cookie and bites into it eagerly. Strawberry. His favorite. Rafael remembered.

Rafael thinks he’s about to get a migraine. Everything seemed so nice and manageable when he left, but he shouldn’t have known it wouldn’t last. One motion to dismiss and everything erupts into chaos. 

“Don’t give me the face, Liv, I did everything completely by the book. Everything was processed, labeled, and analyzed correctly-” Rollins starts.

“Rollins, it was your C.I. You should have followed up on his information before just showing up-”

“I didn’t just ‘show up!’ I got a warrant. Barba, you know that!” They both turn to Rafael who shrugs.

“Yes. I got a warrant.”

“Exactly. So I went there, collected the evidence, and left. This argument that what I collected was outside the scope is complete horseshit! Carisi, you’re in law school, tell them.” 

“Leave Carisi out of this. It wasn’t his screw up.”

“It wasn’t my screw up either! Right, Carisi?” Sonny looks helplessly at Rafael who smiles sympathetically at him.

“Detectives-” he interrupts, trying to get their attention.

“Just a second, Rafa. I need to explain to Rollins how it’s not appropriate to involve the others-”

“Detectives-”

“Barba, just a second. This isn’t your fight.” Rafael sighs. He can hear the pounding starting in his head and he does not want to spend half of one of his favorite holidays incapacitated on the couch with the lights off. Desperate times call for desperate measures. He reaches into his desk for the grogger he brought from home and spins it around, making a loud and jarring noise.

“What the fuck was that?” Rollins and Olivia say at once, and Rafael clears his throat.

“It’s a Purim thing. But that’s not important. What is important is for you to stop yelling in my office. I’m also flattered that you think so highly of my legal skills that you think a Hail Mary attempt by a third-rate attorney is going to derail our entire case.  _ I will handle it _ . Now please leave my office before I have Carmen throw you out. Carisi, you can stay.” Rafael doesn’t miss the smirk that Rollins throws Sonny, but he also doesn’t really care. Sonny smiles once the others have left the room.

“Hey, thanks. I didn’t want to get involved, you know? Because Amanda was right, but the Lieu’s my boss-”

“I understand, trust me.”

“That’s a cool… thing,” Sonny says, gesturing at the noisemaker still in Rafael’s hand.

“It’s a grogger.”

“And it just does that, make noise?”  
“Yep.”

“What’s it for? Assuming you don’t just use it to keep us in line.” Rafael laughs and smiles at Sonny. He appreciates that Sonny makes an effort. It’s nice to have someone to celebrate with. Also God knows how Rafael loves explaining things to him.

“To boo the death of a man who tried to kill all the Jews.”

“So this is another ‘barely avoided genocide’ holiday?” Rafael laughs again, remembering the description he had given Sonny a while ago. Although it was overly simple, he claimed the majority of the Jewish holidays could be separated into three categories: we narrowly escaped eradication now let’s eat, thank God something exists, and solemn contemplations of our failures and the moral ramifications of our actions. 

“Indeed. I’ll tell you the whole story sometime. The short version is that a man, Haman, decided to kill all the Jews, so a Jewish girl named Esther who was also the queen tricked him into meeting with her and the king alone for a couple feasts and once he let his guard down she revealed his entire evil plot and so he was executed on the day he planned to execute all the Jews instead of the Jews.”

“And that day is today?”

“On the lunar calendar.”

“So you’re celebrating this guy’s execution?”

“And we also carry around noisemakers to boo him and remind him we’re still here. And we also eat cookies in the shape of his hat to reiterate how thoroughly we destroyed him.”

“How has there not been a big-budget movie about this?”

“Jewish holidays tend to float below the public consciousness,” Rafael says with a shrug. 

“So no one returns your gift baskets.” Sonny looks genuinely guilty, and Rafael rolls his eyes.

“To remedy the problem, I’ve started dating Catholics and then forcing them to learn about my holidays. Gaining awareness, one man at a time.”

“So you’re going to dump me after Purim?”

“We’ve been dating less than a year. I’ll probably wait until after Passover at least.”

“I’ll take what I can get.” Rafael is relieved to find no apprehension in Sonny’s eyes. It’s been a while since Rafael’s known anyone that could read him so easily. It’s nice.

“Good to know.” Rafael leaves his desk and pulls Sonny into a kiss. “You should probably go,” he says when they separate. “If you don’t rejoin the squad soon, they’ll think we’re doing something untoward.”

“Why would they think that?” Sonny asks, pressing another kiss to Rafael’s lips.

“You said you didn’t want to disclose-”

“Relax. They’ll just think I’m annoying you. We have plenty of time.”

Rafael returns to the precinct to meet one last time with Liv. And also to apologize for nearly deafening her.

“Oh don’t worry about it, it’s part of the holiday spirit,” she says with a smile as she packs up his briefcase. “Besides, I have a toddler. I’m immune to loud noises.” Rafael nods with an amused smile and heads for the elevator, but just before he can get in he hears Sonny calling out for him.

“Rafael, wait!” Rafael turns, hearing Rollins mutter a bemused ‘since when do you call him Rafael?’ under her breath as they approach.

“We felt bad after we didn’t have any of the things.”

“Things?”

“Mishloach manot,” Sonny says proudly, perhaps over-pronouncing the  _ ch _ , but Rafael doesn’t care. “I looked it up.”

“It really is fine, detectives. You had no way of knowing.”

“Still. Carisi gave me the rundown about what it’s about. Executions of genocidal shits deserve to be celebrated. Here’s this.” Rollins awkwardly hands him a paper bag as Sonny desperately tries to appear nonchalant. Rafael immediately recognizes his favorite kind of chocolate, 100 Grand bars. 

“Rollins said we could just get something from the vending machine but I know you like those,” Sonny explains. 

“Thank you,” Rafael says, trying not to let Rollins in on how much it means to him. Outside of synagogue, no one’s ever bothered. Even though he knows Sonny is trying, he didn’t know he was planning to actually  _ do  _ anything. He can’t stop himself from staring at Sonny, bunching the paper bag tightly in his fist. Rollins clears her throat and Rafael nearly jumps.

“No problem. Chag Purim Sameach,” Rollins says.

“ _ Ch _ ag Purim Samea _ ch _ ,” Sonny corrects immediately. “You don’t pronounce it like ‘chair,’ Rollins, c’mon.” Rollins raises her eyebrows at Rafael who nods.

“You did your research,” he comments. 

“I practiced,” Sonny admits. “I don’t want you to feel like no one cares about your holidays. If people ignored Easter, that would suck.” Rafael makes a mental note to buy Sonny the biggest chocolate rabbit he can find for Easter as he clears his throat in an attempt to control his emotions.

“Good night, Rollins. Carisi, walk me to my car? I have some… stuff I want to go over.” 

“Sure!” Sonny says immediately, and Rollins rolls her eyes one last time as she watches them get into the elevator.

“Our cover is definitely blown,” Rafael sighs once they get to his apartment. “With Rollins at least. I don’t know about the Fin or Dodds.”

“I think we were fine until you couldn’t come up with anything better than ‘stuff,’” Sonny mutters goodnaturedly.

“The game was up when you called me ‘Rafael.’”

“When did I do that?”

“When you were getting my attention.”

“Oh. Well I don’t really care.” Rafael raises his eyebrows.

“When I asked you if you wanted to disclose, you immediately said ‘no, we I don’t think we have to, definitely not, no.’” Sonny winces and Rafael sighs. “You’re really okay?”

“Yeah, I mean it’s just Rollins. She’ll give me shit about whether or not you organize your suits by color or sleep next to a pile of Circuit Court opinions or something, but if anyone’s an asshole she’ll break their arm. I’m not worried about her. I’m worried about the assholes.”

“That makes sense.”

“If you really want to-”

“Sonny, if you’re not ready, we won’t.” Sonny nods happily and kisses Rafael’s cheek.

“Hey, you have any more hamentaschen?”

“Of course.” Rafael returns with two strawberry hamentaschen and two glasses of milk. “You know, we picked an apt holiday to discuss the ramifications of being out in front of the assholes,” he muses. “Worst comes to worse we can just pull an Esther and expose them to the people in charge.”

“Doesn’t that imply you would have to seduce Liv?” Rafael’s face immediately contorts into disgust and Sonny laughs. “Or maybe Dodds. That would work better. Would you rather seduce Dodds?”

“Never speak to me again.”

“You started it.”

“Pack your clothes.”

“Aw, c’mon, Raf.”

“I made a perfectly nice reference to a sacred Jewish holiday and you corrupted it. And here I thought you were an ally.”

“I’m a great ally, Raf. I presented you with two different options.”

“You don’t deserve hamentaschen.” Sonny laughs and takes a large bite, smearing strawberry jelly on his face. Rafael rolls his eyes and brings his hand to Sonny’s mouth, attempting to wipe away the jelly. When he leans in to check if he got it all, Sonny closes the distance and kisses him.

“Or you could just seduce me.”

“That was terrible,” Rafael complains, but doesn’t move away as Sonny moves closer, wrapping an arm around the back of Rafael’s neck.

“You liked it.”

“Maybe.” Rafael smiles when Sonny kisses him again. “I like you.”

“And you say that  _ I’m _ terrible,” Sonny sighs. “Let’s go somewhere else. If we’re continuing this, I don’t want to accidentally crush the hamantaschen.”

**Author's Note:**

> I looked it up and apparently there are some movies about Purim, but I attended Hebrew school from Kindergarten-7th grade and was an assistant teacher at my synagogue prior to the pandemic and have never watched one. Hence "big budget" movie specification. 
> 
> Also, I do not mean to disparage anyone who ships Barson with that whole thing about Rafael being disgusted at the idea of flirting with Olivia. While it's not my ship, I see where you're coming from and respect that. However this universe's version of Rafael is not attracted to Olivia in the least, which is why the conversation goes the way it does.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!


End file.
